A Life Wasted

The Trip South

I crossed the Mississippi River at Burlington. It was a small town but the largest one I had passed through since my escape. I would have avoided it had it not been for the Mississippi River. I was sure that there were bridges across the river in more remote locations, but without a map I had no idea where they were. I did see a police car in Burlington, but if he saw me he didn't seem to notice.

It felt good to leave the state of Illinois behind. I knew that there was no real safety to be found in Iowa, but the psychological affect was there none the less. Even knowing it was a false sense of security, I felt safer after crossing the state line. Now that I was in Iowa I needed to stop for a few things. Two needs were pressing. I needed water to drink as the thirty or so hours without water had left me dehydrated, and I needed a map. I spotted a gas station with an outside display of two litter Coke bottles, so I stole one of those. I dumped out the coke and filled it with water at an outside water faucet from a different gas station. At a Wal-Mart I shoplifted a road atlas.

While leaving the Wal-Mart I passed a mirror and got a look at my face. What I saw alarmed me. Back in the truck I used the one good door mirror to look at my face. My face was beaten and battered from the many times I had passed out the previous night. My entire face was cut and bruised. One eye was injured so bad that it was nearly swollen shut and I had dried blood on my chin from where my teeth had been busted out in the fall. I looked like I had been beat by an angry mob. I don't recall ever seeing any one whose face looked worse. When you factor in my severe limp and how painful it was for me to walk it was amazing that no one had said something to me. Especially while I was shoplifting in Wal-Mart.

I found another gas station and used their bathroom to wash the blood off my face. It helped a little to remove the blood from my face, but nothing would help the rest of my face other than the healing passage of time.

After consulting the map, I decided to turn south and stay on the west side of the Mississippi River. I didn't have any real destination yet, but I'd had all I could stand of a northern winter. For now, I wanted to find that warm beach I fantasized about while dying of exposure twenty-four hours earlier. So I found a decent back road and drove south. I wasn't hungry, but forced myself to eat the trail mix as I drove. I drove until dark then found a patch of woods to pull off in and sleep. It was cold in the truck so I shivered in my sleep, but I did sleep. In the morning I continued to drive south.

That day I began thinking about gas again. The first tank was empty and the second mostly full, but having no money I'd have to plan my gas theft well. Knowing that every time I stole gas I risked capture I decided to decrease the times I had to take that chance by increasing my fuel capacity. To this end I went into a Sears and shoplifted four 5-gallon gas cans. I just picked them up and walked out of the store with them. When I found a good high-volume gas station I filled up both of the truck's tanks and the four five gallon cans. I never figured out how much range that gave me, but it was considerable. The five-gallon gas cans alone added more than 300 miles of range.

I still didn't have an appetite but understood the need to eat so I stopped at a grocery store and shoplifted some pre-cooked foods like sausage and cheese and refilled my water jug at another gas station. As it got dark I thought of how cold it had been sleeping in the truck so I stopped at another mall and shoplifted a sleeping bag and coat from another Sears. I drove south until after 9:00 p.m. I could have driven a few more hours but knew it was risky for me to be on the road after the traffic thinned down, so I found a motel off the interstate with a dark parking lot to park. The parking lot had the normal room front spaces and the spots across from the room. The latter had an open field behind the parking lot so I backed up to the field to make my plates difficult to see.

Feeling reasonably safe in the crowded motel parking lot I crawled into my sleeping bag used my new coat for a pillow and went to sleep on the truck's front bench seat.